As the snow has all long been melted and we’ve gone from a white winter landscape to a lush green one,. so has my phenology site. It has once again been mowed, though not too recently, as the grass was about mid shin height. Over time, my site has changed with the seasons. It has changed as someone (who?) has mowed it and as people have indiscriminately thrown litter into it out their car windows. The landmarks I’ve become familiar with are the drainage ditches and the fallen trees that define where in the circle you are. The biggest landmark is the road that so clearly and violently surrounds this small island of “nature” within such an urban area. Nature and culture are intertwined everywhere, but especially here as we see the effects of the surrounding extremely busy streets and highway on this small part of the cloverleaf. The culture at play here is certainly the American culture of car centric cities. Despite Burlington being considered one of the most progressive small cities, it is astonishing how car centric the Burlington metro area outside of uvm and church street is. When I draw the site, too much of my drawing is man made, unnatural. At first, my thought was that I was not a part of my site. Yet it seems that my actions play a large role in the site’s development. I drive a car, and when I need to get onto interstate 89, I use this cloverleaf interchange. I use the roads to go back home, to go on adventures into more traditional nature, and to run on. I demand roads and society delivers them. I am a small part of the reason why infrastructure like this is built. Because everyone wants to be able to work and live and move, and the solution we’ve determined for this applies millions of cars.
